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Liberating Skepticism

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The Politics of Skepticism

Erasmus University Rotterdam

4.6 (17 Bewertungen) | 3.7K Teilnehmer angemeldet

This is a course about the history of Skepticism from the ancient Greeks to today, with special attention to the political ramifications of questioning man's ability to know the world and himself with any certainty. We will discuss the debates raging between Plato and the Sophists, the rise of Christianity in the Roman world, and the so-called 'Skeptical Crisis' of the Renaissance as well as Pierre Bayle's Skepticism and David Hume's. In addition the Natural Law tradition will be explored and the relationship between Skepticism and Conservatism. In the second part, we will explore the systematic relations between Skepticism and politics. What is skeptical doubt? When is doubt relevant? How does Skepticism relate to tolerance and to freedom of expression? And can it help us to solve political problems not only in a critical, but also in a creative way?

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Bewertungen

4.6 (17 Bewertungen)

5 stars
12 ratings
4 stars
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EC

Aug 27, 2017

Very good materials and quality videos. Great teachers. This course made me decide upon Erasmus as the university i want to study at, next year.

JQ

Jun 04, 2017

Nice Course. Enjoyed the concepts. Thanks, sincerely

Aus der Unterrichtseinheit

Skepticism and Conservatism

We will focus on the intimate relationship between Skepticism and the origins of eighteenth-century conservatism: Edmund Burke's analysis of the French Revolution will be put into perspective. But we will also pay attention to the way in which Skepticism came to serve as a progressive and liberating force, for instance in its critique of biblical authority.

Liberating Skepticism8:06

Unterrichtet von

Wiep van Bunge
Prof. dr.
Tim De Mey
Dr.

Skript

[MUSIC]

In our previous clip, we sketched some of the connections between skepticism and

conservatism.

I would to leave you with the impression

that there is something essentially conservative about being a skeptic.

The very fact that skeptics that have always aimed to question what other people

assumed to be obvious suggests that habitually, skepticism has served to

undermine what others traditionally took for granted as being self evidently true.

In particular, humanist scholarship from the 15th century onwards

has succeeded in destroying a number of major pillars of authority.

Just consider the fate of the so called Donatio Constantini.

>> In our clip on Papa versus Plato,

we discussed the political dimensions of the rise of Christianity.

In Ancient Rome, all of a sudden a sect emerged,

claiming that David a king of kings.

Soon, the Church represented a bastion of power coexisting with the state.

With the rise of the European successor states to Rome, the relationship between

the authority of kings and the Church continued to be a bone of contention,

resulting the 12th Century investiture controversy between a series of popes,

the newly established European monarchies,

the German Holy Roman Empire in particular.

Crucial to the case of the Church was the so-called Donatio Costantini.

A document in which the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in the early 4th

century had transferred authority over the Western Roman Empire

to the Bishop of Rome.

That is the pope.

>> It was only the mid 15th century that careful scrutiny of

the Latin text of the Donatio brought to light,

it could not possibly have been composed during the 4th century.

Instead, also the Italian humanist

Lorenzo Valla demonstrated it had to be a 9th century forgery.

It's contained for instance feudal terms.

They only made sense from a Carolinian perspective.

Thus, the newly established art of critically studying ancient

documents with a purpose of editing and

passing them on to future generations could acquire an acute political edge.

The skeptical attitude in the assessment of the wealth of classical text that

became available during the renaissance was absolutely necessary.

As many of the texts purchased from Constantinople or

unearthed in German monasteries raised serious questions of authenticity.

Philologists soon turned into a very major enterprise indeed.

>> By far, the most important ancient document to have been

transmitted from antiquity was of course the bible,

as it was universally held to be the word of God himself.

It took a scholar with the stature of Erasmus to dare and

publish a Greek Latin edition of the new testament in 1516.

>> Roman critics of Christianity had already been suspicious

about the status of some biblical books such as Daniel.

Which this, as they suspected rightly was actually written centuries

after the prophecies involved.

And particularly during the 17th century, classical philologist started wondering

and some of them were bold enough to express their doubts.

Where did Cain's wife come from?

And there perhaps when so called Pre-Adamites, people living before Adam?

Had the flood really covered the entire earth including say for instance China?

Noah managed to cram all animals into a single ship.

How could Moses have been the author of the first five books of the Old Testament?

Did he really describe his own burial?

How did the Egyptian and

the Chinese dynasties fit into the chronology of the Old Testament?

From which, Old Testament thrives that the American Indians descend?

Who, for that matter have been the ancestors of the Inuit?

Some of the most serious, skeptical questions concerning the authenticity and

hence the authority of scripture were put by philosophers,

such as Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza.

Neither of whom were epistemological skeptics, but

they did feel that whatever qualities we might attribute to scripture,

it is no reason not to study the bible as a human artifact.

>> There is this, 19th century myth.

Basically, the product of the polemics surrounding Darwinism.

According to which throughout human civilization, science and

theology had been at loggerheads.

According to 19th and

20th century free thinkers, this was very much a moral struggle.

As Bertrand Russell famously putted in his, Why I Am Not a Christian.

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane

feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step towards the diminution

of war, every step towards better treatment of the colored races, or

every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world,

has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion,

as organized in its churches, has been and

still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

>> But as a matter fact, the huge majority of national scientist until

whether to the 19th century felt to be deciphering the book of nature,

that is god's first revelation.

Far more damaging for the authority of Christianity was the words being done by

scholars questioning the textual basis of this revealed religion and comparing

the religious practices of Christianity to those cultivated elsewhere.

Why should this particular religion be true and all the others false?

What is more, ever since the church furthers a skeptical questions

regarding the coherence and the literal credibility of scripture had been answered

by using the rhetorical principle of accommodation.

Of course,

also it was argued we occasionally hit upon inconsistencies in the Bible for

it is packed with stories that were never meant to be taken literally.

Scripture bears testimony of God's desire to address his people and it is done so

in a language they were able to comprehend.

Gradually, from the late 18th century on-wards,

modernists theologians would start emphasizing the moral character scripture.

By doing so, they were actually following Spinoza, who as early as 1670,

had argued that philosophy and theology have nothing in common.

While philosophy is solely concerned with truth,

Spinoza had claimed theology is essentially about obedience.

Needless to say, that in the 1670s the book in which Spinoza reached this

conclusion was censored immediately, even in the relatively liberal Dutch Republic.

Why is it that Hobbes' and Spinoza's questioning of Moses' authorship

of the first five books of the Old Testament was such a delicate issue?

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